Online shopping from iPhone and iPad skyrockets

Research is showing that online shopping is growing, and iPhone and iPad users are doing a lot of it. Photo Credit: Matthew Downey/Wikimedia Commons/CC-BY-SA

During the recently concluded holiday shopping season, online shopping increased dramatically. Some research showed the biggest increase in online shopping was among iPhone and iPad users.

Shopping online spreads like wildfire

Online shopping is one of the most convenient things possibly known to man. One can get all of their holiday shopping done, possibly spending less than going to stores, all without having to leave the home.

According to MSNBC, IBM estimated that the total amount of online shopping done on Christmas day alone increased 16.4 percent over Christmas day 2010. Online shoppers were also fairly frugal as, according to USA Today, consultancy firm Foresee found 56 percent of the online transactions it surveyed involved free shipping. ComScore, according to CNET, found that holiday e-commerce from Nov. 1 to Dec. 26 had amounted to $35.3 billion, a 15 percent increase over last year.

Mobile devices a big part

IBM also found, according to MSNBC, that transactions conducted on mobile devices such as Android phones or tablets, iPhones and iPads, increased by 172.9 percent on Christmas day itself. According to Fortune, mobile devices represented 14.4 percent of all Christmas day sales tracked by IBM. Of those mobile sales, 7 percent of all online sales tracked by IBM on Christmas day were done on an iPad and 6.4 percent were from iPhones, accounting for 13.4 percent of online sales. Android devices accounted for 5 percent of mobile sales. Other reports have found a much greater share for iOS devices. San Francisco-based research firm RichRelevance found that 92 percent of mobile device transactions were from iOS devices. Mobile devices in RichRelevance’s study accounted for about 18 percent of all online transactions.

Still a tiny share overall

The numbers are certainly impressive, especially given that the iPad was released less than two years ago. However, RichRelevance also observed that all online transactions accounted for only 3.74 percent of retail purchases during the first three weeks of December. RichRelevance found that online transactions among the retailers it studied accounted for about 3 percent of all transactions from April 1 to Dec. 21. Mobile shopping is still far from being anything close to the norm.